Kate McNee ’11
Head Copy Editor

On Feb. 19, during break, I, like many other students I’m sure, was watching the Olympics when I decided to turn on Tiger Woods’ press conference about his infidelity.

This is a bold statement to say, but, in a way, I found Tiger Woods’ whole press conference pretty sad and amusing.

Of course, I don’t find what he did funny. Being married with two children and hooking up with over 12 gross, random girls is horrifying, especially since he pretended to be such a role model. 

But, as the press conference itself goes, it had such undertones and hidden (not really, though) agendas that it was pathetic.

Obviously, the speech’s main intent was not to “apologize to the public.”

Although I don’t doubt that Tiger is (somewhat) sorry for his actions, and that he feels bad for being a bad example to so many, I seriously doubt he would have done it if his endorsements, and his $100 million income (versus his roughly seven million from golf), didn’t depend upon it.

It was clearly an apology and a plea to his endorsers. As one interesting person on a blog site said, he was basically saying “sorry for no longer being profitable.” Even though he only had his “closest friends” (and his mom) at the conference, he was obviously talking to his endorsers.

Evidence of this was Tiger’s elegantly-delivered monotone of a speech, which was seemed to be written by his managers. Tiger apologized to about half the globe: his advertisers, his wife, his children, his fans, everyone. Clearly, the goal was to repair his image, so he wouldn’t make the companies sponsoring him look bad.

He walked in with the speech, and didn’t utter more than about two clauses without retreating to his notes. This didn’t surprise me all that much because even to someone like me, who hasn’t watched tons of golf, I can tell that Tiger’s image has been carefully crafted and devoid of spontaneity.

The unauthentic nature of his speech was further emphasized in how he spoke with sparse voice inflection and no emotion.

I understand that telling America about your giant love fest is no easy feat. But in order to detract from the fact that he was expressing emotions someone else wrote down for him, he probably should have mixed it up a bit. Maybe put the paper aside once.

Tiger’s stares through the camera, when he would tell America that he was “truly sorry,” were painfully unnatural and seemingly timed; whenever he did one of these stares, it felt plain awkward and uncomfortable.

So, basically, Tiger’s press conference was the result of economic incentive… even though he spent the entire time talking about his sorrow, regret, and something about Buddhism.

I’m sure he’s really sorry. Sorry he got caught.

Lolz.